Tierney Gearon's ABC

Photographer Tierney Gearon's new children's book provides an enchanting, yet contemporary take on family life.

“I thought it was going to be a fun, easy art project I would do with my children. Little did I know I was about to launch on the hardest project I have done to date,” writes the Los Angeles-based photographer Tierney Gearon about her latest edition, Alphabet Book. “Every image was like directing a different scene in a movie. The calculated kid-chaos playtime I set up with my children and their friends was not nearly as effortless as I’d imagined it would be.”

Gearon began working on the project four years ago, as something of a distraction for a close friend who was going through divorce. She captured the images, from A through to Z, on road trips during the school holidays, explaining: “I would pack up the car and fill our luggage with all kinds of things. We would play, set things up and then the magic would either happen — or not. How many moms do you know who would bring a red battery-operated mini-sized Mercedes out to the desert with a box full of spray-paint cans and then tell the kids it is time to decorate? How could the kids not love it?”

While the photographer’s work has sparked controversy in the past, Gearon describes this latest endeavor as “a playful book — what I call an art book for children, or a children’s book for adults” and indeed, Gearon’s vivid imagery provides a dreamlike and contemporary take on family life.